[Foundation-l] Gliimpse: Animating From Markup Code To Rendered Result

2012-03-25 Thread Kim Bruning
Spotted this because it one of the demonstrated uses was with  wikimarkup. How
useful it actually is or is not is a different question.

Writing documents using markup languages isn't always easy. Take Wikipedia, for
example: one often needs time to relocate the current focus when they switch
between previewing and editing mode. Now with Gliimpse, one can watch the markup
code gradually turn into the rendered result. The demonstration on Youtube 
simply
looks amazing, and shows that the software supports many markup languages,
including LaTex Mathematics.



http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/03/25/1322252/animating-from-markup-code-to-rendered-result
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG3ELslkHDYfeature=youtu.be
http://www.aviz.fr/gliimpse/

They have a working demo written in java, by the look opf things.



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Re: [Foundation-l] Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Stopping the presses:, , Britannica to stop printing books

2012-03-21 Thread Kim Bruning
 But what to call it? Wikipedia2 doesn't have much flavor. 
 WikipediaLocalized? WikiDetails? WikipediaExpanded? WikipediaSuppliment?
 
 On 3/20/2012 5:24 PM, foundation-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
  From: David Goodmandgge...@gmail.com
  What I suggest is a '''Wikipedia Two''  - an encyclopedia supplement
  where the standard of notability  is much relaxed, but which will be
  different from Wikia by still requiring  Verifiability and NPOV. It
  would include the lower levels of barely  notable articles in
  Wikipedia, and  a good deal of what we do not let in.

  But it would be interesting to see the results of a search option:
  Do you want to see everything (WP+WP2), or only the really notable (WP)?
  Anyone care to guess which people would choose?

Ha! I'd choose Wikipedia2 anyday! ;-) (my favorite articles keep getting
deleted from wikipedia. How's that useful to anyone?)

Notability was originally a stopgap for verifiability IIRC. It's gone off
the rails imo.

On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 09:40:20AM -0700, Robin McCain wrote:
 This is an excellent idea - a kind of searchable sandbox where articles 
 could eventually be promoted into the main site or simply used as in 
 depth backing for a Wikipedia One article. 

I'm thinking wikipedia needs a reboot anyway. We'll probably end up
with a replay of wikipedia/nupedia if we reboot a wp2 with tidied up and
streamlined policy (redesign as a pattern language), integrated
Prod/AFD, deprecated arbcom in favor of DRN, and most importantly:
ensuring new users all get mentors.

Acculturation failure has severely harmed WP1, we need some way to
bring experienced and inexperienced users together reliably. This is
the simplest and best way to retain editors. :-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning



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[Foundation-l] CBC getting rid of physical archives(but not digitising all of them)

2012-03-14 Thread Kim Bruning
The CBC is getting rid of its physical music collections in Vancouver and 
other sites across the country, a treasure
trove of over 100,000 artifacts amassed over decades. Valuable, rare and 
historic recordings on vinyl and tape will be
destroyed or dispersed, lost to all of us forever. 

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/save-cbc-music-archives

Is this accurate news? If so, can we (eg: commons/wikisource) help?

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] introduction (community communications for Wikidata)

2012-03-09 Thread Kim Bruning
On Fri, Mar 09, 2012 at 06:13:10PM +0100, Lydia Pintscher wrote:
 Hi everyone!
 
 I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself. I'm Lydia and just
 started working for Wikimedia Germany. Some of you might know me from
 my work in Free Software projects.
 
 I'll be a part of the team working on Wikidata
 (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata) - the goal of the project is
 to create something similar to Wiki Commons for data). It's a huge
 undertaking for the German and global community. Wikidata is a project
 I am passionate about and I am even more passionate about doing it
 right. 

Awesome plan!

Minor naming detail: 
There's an extension called Wikidata too! O:-)

http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/Wikidata/

I haven't looked at that in a while. 
Heh, I wonder what the current status is?

sincerely,
Kim Bruning.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter

2012-03-09 Thread Kim Bruning
On Fri, Mar 09, 2012 at 02:17:28PM +, Thomas Morton wrote:
 Improving the filtering of information is a critical facet of making it
 accessible to as many people as possible. If a Muslim refuses to go to
 Wikipedia because of our image policy - which we (realistically) impose on
 him - then we have failed in our core objective.

Hmm, well ar.wikipedia (who probably have a large number of muslim
editors) does have an image hiding template; apparently adequate for
their needs.  They introduced it to a very small number of pages, but
that number has halved over time. 

AFAICT The people who are pushing for filtering are mostly from what we
traditionally regard as being the West. 

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] We are the media, and so are you Jimmy Wales and Kat Walsh OpEd in Washington Post

2012-02-09 Thread Kim Bruning
On Thu, Feb 09, 2012 at 04:52:49PM -0500, Jay Walsh wrote:
 (Sharing this oped published in the Washington Post today. Will be printed
 in tomorrow's paper)
 
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-are-the-media-and-so-are-you/2012/02/09/gIQAfNW81Q_story.html
 
 We are the media, and so are you


Jimmy+Kat ++ :-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] Journal Boycott

2012-02-01 Thread Kim Bruning
On Wed, Feb 01, 2012 at 12:53:23PM -0500, Gwern Branwen wrote:
 Of course, this proposal has the problem that to work, it would
 require editors to add a lot of content, rather than delete it. But it
 shows that we have a lot of options besides the simple-minded 'ban
 Elsevier citations' option.


Coulw we start a WikiJournal of some sort? (Akin to WikiNews in
operation, perhaps?)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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[Foundation-l] ACTA signed but not ratified Re: ACTA analysis?

2012-01-26 Thread Kim Bruning

==Update==

ACTA has been signed by the EU and 22 member states, but must still be ratified.
We have time for a good analysis, and time to set up a game plan before that 
time.

OTOH If we decide to act, we shouldn't be *too* slow, 
or we'll lose the momentum that has built up.

Currently la quadrature du net is coordinated best.

http://www.laquadrature.net/en/acta-signed-by-the-eu-lets-defeat-it-together
https://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/How_to_act_against_ACTA

sincerly,
Kim Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] ACTA analysis?

2012-01-25 Thread Kim Bruning
On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 08:13:59PM -0800, Geoff Brigham wrote:
 Hi Kim,
 
 I will be happy to ask one of our junior attorney interns, Stephen, to do a
 short 1-2 page summary of ACTA.  This may take about a week.  BTW Stephen
 is a Wikipedian who has been providing significant and excellent support to
 me during the SOPA protest.

Geoff, Hello Stephen! That would be a great start.

There's currently a lot of impetus for action across the world. This analysis
will help guide that. I wonder if it will make the history books? :-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] ACTA analysis?

2012-01-25 Thread Kim Bruning
On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 08:37:38PM +0100, Kim Bruning wrote:
 On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 08:13:59PM -0800, Geoff Brigham wrote:
  Hi Kim,
  
  I will be happy to ask one of our junior attorney interns, Stephen, to do a
  short 1-2 page summary of ACTA.  This may take about a week.  BTW Stephen
  is a Wikipedian who has been providing significant and excellent support to
  me during the SOPA protest.
 
 Geoff, Hello Stephen! That would be a great start.
 
 There's currently a lot of impetus for action across the world. This analysis
 will help guide that. I wonder if it will make the history books? :-)

+ thank you very much for your time, of course. :-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning
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[Foundation-l] ACTA analysis?

2012-01-24 Thread Kim Bruning
I would like to thank Geoff Brigham for the excellent job he did analysing the 
consequences of SOPA for wikipedia. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Legal_overview

Would it be possible to analyse ACTA in a similar manner? This is apparently 
the treaty text:

http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/assets/pdfs/acta-crc_apr15-2011_eng.pdf


Possibly we've already done so, and I've missed it? :-)

I'm especially interested in the following questions:
* What issues, if any, does ACTA raise, for wikipedia?
* what points would be wise to point out to legislature, to ensure wikipedia 
does not come to harm, if implemented anyway?

We can then proceed to engage with the diverse members of the diverse 
committees in .eu (as required), or engage with our local
legislature (as required)

Once appropriate for us, note that La quadrature du net is taking action, and 
has collected all relevant phone numbers and addresses etc:

https://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/How_to_act_against_ACTA#Contact_your_Elected_Representatives

The window for action on ACTA is now very narrow, time is short.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] FW: [Wikitech-l] proposed tech conference anti-harassment policy

2012-01-22 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 05:54:34PM -0500, MZMcBride wrote:
 Steven Walling wrote:
  If a policy makes good sense, we clearly need it, and feedback about the
  text is mostly positive, then we should adopt it. Rejecting a good idea
  because of process wonkery is stupid.
 
 Really? Does this apply to discussions on any Wikimedia wiki at any time
 with any group of people? This way forward certainly has the potential to
 create some interesting policies. :-)

I thought this approach had never really been deprecated. (Just under-used in 
recent years)

Stealing procedure from a different well-known venue:
Without objection, I move that this become policy.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning 

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[Foundation-l] Politico: Wikimedia foundation hires lobbyists on sopa, pipa

2012-01-22 Thread Kim Bruning
Wikimedia foundation hires lobbyists on sopa, pipa
http://www.politico.com/morningtech/0112/morningtech377.html

Interesting. Any details?

sincerely,
Kim Bruning
 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Announcement: Maggie Dennis to continue with WMF

2012-01-20 Thread Kim Bruning
On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 11:55:40AM -0800, Philippe Beaudette wrote:
 Hi all,
 
 I'm thrilled to announce that Maggie Dennis, our community liaison, has
 agreed to transition to a permanent role with the Wikimedia Foundation.

.oO(Who is Maggie Denn...)

  As
 User:Moonriddengirl 

Oh! Duh. Yes. Definitely keep her around. O:-)

(Congratulations. Keep up the good work! :-) 

sincerely,
Kim Bruning



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[Foundation-l] Tor guys talking about what happens when your innocent western filter shows up in a repressive state.

2012-01-19 Thread Kim Bruning

Apparently tor has been having some issues dealing with filtering software that 
repressive regimes have been importing from the west

Here they discuss the ethics of making filter software, from their 
in-the-trenches perspective.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpagev=DX46Qv_b7F4#t=3944s
(from tor talk at CCC)

The entire video is a fascinating discussion on how censorship works,  and how 
these guys are working to fight it.
I'm really impressed by what they do and how they think.


As always I wish we could cooperate with tor more.

sincerely
Kim bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] Spanish website blocking law implemented

2012-01-06 Thread Kim Bruning

And canada is considering pushing back the public domain 20 years, under
... us influence yet again.

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6225/125/

(Proposed and existing) US policy (foreign and domestic) is not really
in favor of wikimedia at the moment, is it? :-/


sincerely,
Kim Bruning
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Re: [Foundation-l] Spanish website blocking law implemented

2012-01-05 Thread Kim Bruning
On Wed, Jan 04, 2012 at 08:02:32PM +0100, emijrp wrote:
 http://gigaom.com/2012/01/04/how-spains-version-of-sopa-is-setting-the-web-on-fire/
 
 2012/1/4 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com
 
  emijrp, 04/01/2012 18:59:
   With this law, a special team in the Ministry of Culture of Spain can
  block
   any (for-profit or non-profit) website, from Spain or overseas, that
   _links_ to copyrighted works. Including Google, Wikipedia or whatever.
   Without a judge.
 


More links off of slashdot:

http://torrentfreak.com/us-threatened-to-blacklist-spain-for-not-implementing-site-blocking-law-120105/


To make a long story short, the USA is already pushing for SOPA in other 
countries. The game is afoot. I wonder if we've missed other countries that 
might
implement similar legislation soon?

In any case, it might be a good idea to check how and if the new spanish laws 
(will) affect WMF, and what measures need to be taken to stay safe for now.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning


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[Foundation-l] Spanish website blocking law implemented

2012-01-03 Thread Kim Bruning

Looks like .us is pushing other countries to implement similar laws, eg. .es :

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/01/03/0241248/spanish-website-blocking-law-implemented

sincerely,
Kim Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] sopa debate now live

2011-12-19 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 12:20:34AM +0100, Kim Bruning wrote:
 
 Further SOPA debate postponed 'till wednesday.
 
 https://twitter.com/#!/jasoninthehouse/status/147819972498948097


The Easiest way to kill SOPA would be to interact with the committee before 
Wednesday. 

Are there any DC wikimedians who might be able to help out with a limited action
(something like a letter, or a meeting, stating that SOPA would harm WP/WMF?)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning



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Re: [Foundation-l] Smurfs Movie is infringing on wikipedia copyright

2011-12-19 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 01:35:03PM +, David Gerard wrote:
 On 18 December 2011 12:38, Mike  Dupont jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com 
 wrote:
 
  Ok. I understand that. Maybe I am getting upset over nothing, but when
  it comes to shutting down people who copy small clips and snippets
  from movies, it seems that the industry also shows no mercy.
 
 
 It would be interesting for press coverage. Well, in real life of
 course, they'd check with legal. But you can in fact reuse many images
 because of free licensing etc NASA public domain blah blah. Might
 provide a useful educational hook.

Let's look at this with the glass half full:

This time, we already did the deal, but in future, couldn't we ask people to do 
stuff like a
the Smurfs explain Free Licensing PSA in return? ;-)

And if you don't smurf smurfs, surely we could smurf something smurfy like this 
in the
next deal to smurf along?  ;-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] The Mediawiki 1.18 image rotation bug on Commons and on all Wikimedia projects

2011-12-19 Thread Kim Bruning
On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 11:35:24AM +1100, Tim Starling wrote:
 On 13/12/11 01:36, Teofilo wrote:
  Let us stop asking users to individually tag every wrong picture! Let
  us have some developers create a tool to find wrong pictures and
  rotate them back to their original orientation!
 
 We could make a list of all images with EXIF rotation. I'm not sure
 how you would separate that into correctly-rotated and
 incorrectly-rotated images. There's not any simple way to tell whether
 a picture is sideways.

I wonder... if we run/simulate the old routine vs the new routine, and we 
notice that there
is a difference in outcome between the two, we could add a check me template. 
scratches
head 

sincerely,
Kim We Are The Robots Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] Smurfs Movie is infringing on wikipedia copyright

2011-12-17 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 10:59:29AM +, B?ria Lima wrote:
 
  *it's because smurfs didn't like Wikipedia's article on them.
 They can always edit the article ;) xD

No No, that'd be COI editing. They need to discuss their proposed changes on 
the talk page!

sincerely,
Kim Bruning



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Re: [Foundation-l] Smurfs Movie is infringing on wikipedia copyright

2011-12-17 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 11:00:30AM -0800, Jay Walsh wrote:
 Hi folks - I can confirm that this is not an infringement of the WIkipedia
 marks.

Well, bother.

I was so looking forward to an epic tea-party.

sincerely,
Kim 'O:-)' Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] sopa debate now live

2011-12-16 Thread Kim Bruning

Further SOPA debate postponed 'till wednesday.

https://twitter.com/#!/jasoninthehouse/status/147819972498948097

sincerly,
Kim Bruning

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[Foundation-l] sopa debate now live

2011-12-15 Thread Kim Bruning

http://keepthewebopen.com/sopa

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] sopa debate now live

2011-12-15 Thread Kim Bruning
On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 08:40:00PM +0100, Kim Bruning wrote:
 
   http://keepthewebopen.com/sopa

(Also we hijacked #wikimedia-office for discussion O:-) )

sincerely,
Kim Bruning 

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Re: [Foundation-l] How SOPA will hurt the free web and Wikipedia

2011-12-14 Thread Kim Bruning
On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 05:43:03PM +, Thomas Dalton wrote:

 Presumably
 there will be a more formal process to decide whether we actually go
 ahead with it - has that started somewhere? If not, has anyone at
 least figured out what form that process will take?

Strictly speaking, the straw poll there is sufficient, unless people bring
up true blockers. 

sincerely,  
Kim Bruning
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Re: [Foundation-l] How SOPA will hurt the free web and Wikipedia

2011-12-14 Thread Kim Bruning
On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 10:59:13PM +, Fae wrote:
  Strictly speaking, the straw poll there is sufficient, unless people bring
  up true blockers.
 
  sincerely,
  ? ? ? ?Kim Bruning
 
 I contributed to the straw poll on the understanding given at the top
 of the straw poll:
 This is merely a straw poll to indicate overall interest. If this
 poll is firmly 'opposed' then I'll know that now. But even if this
 poll is firmly in 'support' we'd obviously go through a much longer
 process to get some kind of consensus around parameters, triggers, and
 timing.
 
 I would strongly object and encourage others to strike their opinions
 if the straw poll were retrospectively and arbitrarily misused as a
 statement of consensus for something else.

It can be currently and non-arbitrarily used to infer that most people
are in favor of some sort of contra-SOPA action. The exact form of the
action is (according to this) yet to be determined.

Seeing the current state of the poll, working on such details is
probably a good idea right now. We should also check to see if
there are blockers or ancillary points listed that need to be addressed.

If this is not what you intended, then
* reread [[WP:POLL]], [[WP:CONSENSUS]], [[WP:NOT#Community]]
* strike your position, if it's still not what you intended.
* alternately, restate your position to include relevant/adequate
  provisions.

OTOH, I think that it is pretty close to your intent that we indeed
proceed, is it not?

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

[
Strictly, politically, given only current information: 

if one were to BOLDly set the main page to a big black
anti-SOPA-message; one would probably get away with it and get a
barnstar-or-two besides. This due to getting -perhaps not 80%- but
definitely a majority of statements in ones favor at the inevitable
RFC. 

Good Old Ed Poor survived to tell a similar tale with much less
upfront support. He would definitely have been able to *fully*
pull off his move -and possibly ensure editor retention- had he had an
80%-in-favor-poll upfront.oO(tempting thought)
]

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Re: [Foundation-l] How SOPA will hurt the free web and Wikipedia

2011-12-14 Thread Kim Bruning
On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 11:57:51PM +, Fae wrote:
 On 14 December 2011 22:42, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote:
 
 No. My opinion was on the straw man as stated, not for some later
 re-interpretation.

Um, You opposed the straw man as stated. If you strike your position,
then I'd interpret that as not wanting to stop it. ;-)

( Hmm, only american topic articles? That'd be tricky )

For the record, I have my reservations too.

 None of the !votes were for a carte blanche to proceed with action. A
 consensus would have to be gained for any particular proposal.

The positions in general seem to be in favor of action, albeit not
carte blanche.

But like I said, TECHNICALLY, if someone were to (unwisely) proceed to
take an action right right now, they'd probably survive running the
proverbial gauntlet (RFC) by the skin of their teeth. My
interpretation (a subtly different thing from 'opinion' ;-) is that there
is sufficient consensus to move as it stands. I agree that that is not
quite what this poll says, but it is something one can infer.

You might disagree perhaps, but in the end only the post-action RFC would show
which of us was actually right in such a case. Let's hope it doesn't
quite happen that way.

At any rate, it seems wise to discuss the constraints within which
en.wikipedia should act. As the discussion progresses, the odds of
successful action increase.


sincerely,
Kim bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] How SOPA will hurt the free web and Wikipedia

2011-12-14 Thread Kim Bruning
On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 02:49:00AM +, Thomas Dalton wrote:
 I would say that technically Jimmy's statement that it was just an
 informal poll to decide whether it is worth discussing further is binding.
 Someone acting on that poll alone might get away with it, but it would
 technically be out-of-process.

([[WP:NBD]] on anything being binding)

We have a poll that shows we have a rough consensus right off the bat.

No elaborate rituals are needed, we already know that people will
tend to agree on our next action.

We can proceed to discuss means and methods and triggers, and -if
requested- run a 2nd poll at the end of that to ensure we have indeed
improved consensus by taking as many people into account as possible.

This can be done by the end of next week even, if folks are 
willing to assume good faith and work on things.

No faster than prudent,
no slower than necessary.
That's the wiki way. :-)

That, and remember that it is preferable to stage a protest BEFORE passage of
the bill. :-P

sincerely,  
Kim Kids these days, get off my lawn! Bruning 

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Re: [Foundation-l] How SOPA will hurt the free web and Wikipedia

2011-12-14 Thread Kim Bruning
On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 04:04:36AM +, Thomas Dalton wrote:
 On Dec 15, 2011 3:20 AM, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote:
  That, and remember that it is preferable to stage a protest BEFORE
 passage of
  the bill. :-P
 
 I'm not sure about that. If we strike before they pass the bill then we are
 assuming they will pass it. Shouldn't we give them a chance to do the right
 thing? If we think striking is a good idea (and it certainly looks like we
 do) then I would rather we threaten to strike and only actually do it if
 they do pass the bill.

Same kind of thing as (external) people protesting us going to Israel I think. 
By the time they protested,
we couldn't change our venue if we wanted to.

Didn't they know we can't change venue at the last minute? They should have 
voiced their
objections EARLIER!

But I'll leave it up to the US politics experts to figure out the best timing. 
;-)

Maybe we can do something else earlier? (probably best to continue this onwiki 
:-)

sincerely,  
Kim Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] The next Wikimedia architecture

2011-12-13 Thread Kim Bruning
On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 05:57:02AM +, Randall Britten wrote:
 One more vote from me for a collaborative Wikipedia hosting: In order to 
 future proof Wikimedia, an even more distributed architecture is needed.  
 This would allow another way to contribute to the Wikimedia effort: the 
 donation of technical resources.
 
 This idea is by no means a new idea, see for example 
 http://www.globule.org/publi/DWECWH_webist2007.html and 
 http://www.globule.org/?page_id=72

List here:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:HaeB/Timeline_of_distributed_Wikipedia_proposals

sincerely,
Kim Bruning
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Re: [Foundation-l] [Internal-l] Regarding Berkman/Sciences Po study

2011-12-12 Thread Kim Bruning
On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 06:59:24PM +, Oliver Keyes wrote:
 
 On Sunday, 11 December 2011, Renata St renataw...@gmail.com wrote:
  as per WIARM.
  As I said, analyze and nitpick things to death. Does any of that above *
  really* matter?
 Speaking off the record and in my personal capacity - fuckin' A. Thank you
 for being the one sane voice :p

Hilariously enough, Renata and I are saying almost the same thing, I just 
[[WP:WOTTA]]ed it.
The one thing we disagree on is that Renata is arguing Ignore all rules
and I prepend:  if it improves the encyclopedia

Compare with the policy on the page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IAR

The tag soup takes up more space than the actual policy. :-P

It really can't get much simpler than this. If you want to look at some of the 
corolleries
of this single sentence rule, see [[Wikipedia:What Ignore all rules means]].

If you think that's insane, then I seriously don't know what's sane anymore. :-/

sincerely,
Kim Ignore All Rules; or else! Bruning
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Re: [Foundation-l] [Internal-l] Regarding Berkman/Sciences Po study

2011-12-12 Thread Kim Bruning
On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 07:01:58PM -0500, Nathan wrote:
 Kim,
 
 One thing that confuses me. On the Foundation-l list, why do you
 insist on peppering your comments with English Wikipedia alphabet soup
 and references to local project policy? A pretty large proportion of
 the readers of this list have no interest in such pages, and no
 knowledge of what you mean when you say you [[WP:WOTTA]]'d something.


Because I realize I'm breaking one of my own rules O:-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WOTTA

Thanks for reminding me. I promise to adhere to it better in future.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] Regarding Berkman/Sciences Po study

2011-12-11 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 12:48:05PM -0500, Renata St wrote:
 
  Hmm, the research committee still hasn't made any onwiki statement at a
  relevant location that I can find. If this were a court case, RCom
  would pretty much have lost by default and/or forfeit already.
 
 
 As I said, analyze and nitpick things to death. Does any of that above *
 really* matter?
 
 It distresses me to see the community turned into this insane
 policy-enforcing power-hungry gang.

Heh, you're using the right argument in response to the wrong person.  What can 
I say, you're absolutely right. The community really needs to be more flexible. 

Oddly, depite all criticism, apparently they're currently still faster on their 
feet and more flexible than the foundation (or rcom, at least)

There's 3 ways in which I feel you can get away with murder on wikipedia and 
still get a barnstar. ;-) [1]

These methods still work!

1: If it's in a policy, it's pre-approved. We're done here, let's go home and 
get lemonade... But what if you don't know policy?
2: Well, you can just go talk with someone, ask, and maybe reach agreement 
(consensus)... But what if you don't know anyone?
3: Well, just do what you think is right  ...but/and if someone comes up and 
goes 'ello 'ello 'ello, what's this 'ere then? You should have your
answer ready on-wiki. ;-) ('ignore all rules')


I'm ok with people not knowing policy(1), I'm ok with people not quite grokking 
consensus(2), and you know what? I'm worlds the biggest fan of
'do what ye will' (modulo 'An it harm no one') (3). 

Now when we get to the 'An it harm no one' part; how are people going to figure 
that out? Well, that's when they start asking questions.  They're required to 
assume good faith on your part, and -conversely- you're not even required to 
answer their questions! 

So far, you still haven't done anything wrong. It's all allowed!

Now, if you don't answer questions, that's perfectly ok, people will simply try 
to puzzle things out on their own. If they decide that your actions are Mostly 
Harmless, you're good, carry on.

Of course, if they can't figure it out (or think you are doing something bad) 
someone might ask you to stop doing what you are doing. If you then stop doing 
it, once again, you're in the clear.

Only if you continue after being asked to stop, or if you do something after 
people have told you don't do that or don't do it that way ... ok, well, 
then the community will really have to use a little bit of muscle to stop you.

And that's what happened here. 

The Rcom can probably STILL solve this issue at almost any moment in time, by 
simply going on wiki and actually either: Answering the questions asked of them 
(3), reaching agreement on what to do next(2), or pointing to a policy that 
says they can run banners(1).

I did take Jerome on-wiki on thursday/friday. This helped a bit :-)  But not 
enough, since the actual rcom weren't around for backup.

Personally, my rule of thumb is to give people 24 hours. Fair's fair: people 
don't watch the wiki all day, they might live in a different time zone, etc. 
Rcom have exceeded that limit and they still haven't posted on-wiki (which is 
the place where the people are who actually have a say).

Well, ok, maybe Rcom decided to start weekend early and already went to the 
pub? :-)

Nooo, wait, they actually posted on foundation-l more recently. ... Eh? Didn't 
we all tell them to go talk to the actual wiki-folks A.S.A. effing P?

I'll be frank. Rcom has messed this one up simply by flailing around in circles 
and failing to do the one. single. thing.  they. needed. to. really.  really. 
do.

Rcom: Do you expect us to die?
Goldfinger: No Mr. Rcom, we expect you to talk!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1TmeBd9338

sincerely,
Kim stirred, not shaken Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] Regarding Berkman/Sciences Po study

2011-12-11 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 11:45:26PM +0400, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:
 Do you actually realize that RCom is not a single person
Of course. That's why it's a good idea to assign a liason (which is a role
done by a person). The other solution is to allow rcom members to speak and
think autonomously, like we expect from wikipedians. :-)

 and that there
 is no way we can issue an official statement in 24 hours? 
We don't need an official statement. We need people on the ground who
communicate, answer questions and make decisions. To summarise:  you need
people to negotiate consensus.

 I am not sure we need to issue anything as a body anyway
I'll help you with this one; I am absolutely certain: You do not.

  but if we need it is absolutely unrealistic to do in 24 hours, since most
  of us have not been involved since June (when we last approved the survey).
Good for you. Would you happen to know when _en.wikipedia_ approved the survey?
;-)


  We do not have any magic means of communication 
I have such magic in my pocket. It's my appointment diary. 

 that would get every RCom member 
We really need only 1 or 2, who are fully briefed on what Rcom is doing, and
only at those times when the Rcom is doing things.

 online immediately 
It's very easy to be online immediately when you are doing a pre-planned
action, and therefore know the times to be online well in advance.

 and produce a statement
No statement is necessary, per se. 

 and answer all the questions.
That's the one good idea here. Also, the members you have online must be 
authorised to
make decisions. You are required to either follow policy and/or reach
consensus, and this often requires negotiation.

By analogy: imagine you walk into a bank office and start working on their
computers. No one knows who you are, no one knows what you are doing, and you
have no contract, contact info of the local manager, or ID on you.
What's going to happen?

sincerely,
Kim Bruning
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Re: [Foundation-l] Regarding Berkman/Sciences Po study

2011-12-11 Thread Kim Bruning
On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 12:00:42AM +0400, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:
  With the greatest of respect.. it shouldn't need the whole of RCOM, no
  statement is needed. Just for someone to go on-wiki and answer queries
 (or
  if nothing else say - sorry we need to look into this, bear with us).
  
  The complaint Kim is making is that no one has done this.
  
  Tom
 
 Well, I can do it (not answering the questions, since I am not involved in
 the project, but to say we need more time). What would be the most
 appropriate place to do it?

I've already done some of that for you, together with Jerome. :-)

A new subsection here would work:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Harvard.2FScience_Po_Adverts

And what we really need right now is 1 (preferably 2) rcom members who are
involved with the project.

To be sure: this is not just a good idea. This is basic wiki(pedia) policy for
beginners. ;-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] Regarding Berkman/Sciences Po study

2011-12-11 Thread Kim Bruning
On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 12:27:34AM +0400, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:
 I will do it right now, but to make it clear, we have 2 (TWO: twee, zwei,
 deux, dos ...) RCOM members in total who are involved: Dario and Mayo. I do
 not think anybody else would be able to answer any questions. 
 And last contribution of Mayo in en.wp, from what I see, is from June.
  So I guess it would be difficult to have two RCom members answering
  questions.  

That is most unfortunate.

 Btw trolling on mailing lists is also not just a bad idea, it
  goes against a basic policy for beginners.

With the greatest possible respect; I would suggest that the research
committee does not have the kind of standing required to accuse others of
disruptive behaviour, at this point in time.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning




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Re: [Foundation-l] Regarding Berkman/Sciences Po study

2011-12-11 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 01:19:04PM -0800, Dario Taraborelli wrote:
 Kim,

 I appreciate your contribution on the talk page of the project and
 I am happy to host a conference call with Jerome some time this
 week if you wish to help us out.

I see quite some issues, but I recognize an olive branch when I see
one. :-) 

Believe it or not, I've been trying to help, but I'm
obviously somewhat frustrated now. 

Could we call privately first, at some time during the week?

sincerely,
Kim Bruning
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Re: [Foundation-l] Regarding Berkman/Sciences Po study

2011-12-11 Thread Kim Bruning
On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 12:27:34AM +0400, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:
  I've already done some of that for you, together with Jerome. :-)
  
  A new subsection here would work:
 
   
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Harvard.2FScience_Po_Adverts
  

 I will do it right now, 

That's a good start!

sincerely,
Kim Bruning
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Re: [Foundation-l] Regarding Berkman/Sciences Po study

2011-12-10 Thread Kim Bruning
On Fri, Dec 09, 2011 at 07:51:06PM -0800, Dario Taraborelli wrote:
 So what went wrong?

Local consensus does not override global consensus.

* The research committee failed to adhere to applicable consensus. [1]
* In lieu of consensus, the research committee failed to adhere to or point to 
any applicable policy permitting or denying their action. [2]
* In lieu of policy, the research committee failed to discuss or explain their 
actions on-wiki within a reasonable time-frame, nor was any subtantial 
corrective action undertaken within a reasonable time frame. (IAR, WIARM, BRD) 
[3][4]

Therefore, the decision to terminate the use of the study banners at
this time was correct, and could be (and was) validly carried out by
any meta admin. (In the end 2 different people drew the same
conclusion almost simultaneously)

It seems reasonable to suggest that the research committee take the
time to obtain an (at least slightly) broader consensus before
restarting their study[5]. It is reasonable to believe that the
research committee might be sanctioned individually or collectively,
should they fail to do so. The making of on-wiki statements is highly
recommended, as off-wiki statements do not contribute to consensus.

In future, before a person or committee starts or continues use of a
wiki-resource, it would be wise to:
* Research, interpret, and adhere to any applicable policy/guideline/essay 
documents.  
* Obtain and/or research and/or interpret relevant consensus, and adhere to it. 
 
* Plan sufficient time and resources for the correction of (inevitable) 
unforseen issues.

If this is done in a timely manner, this needn't take a lot of time or
difficulty. Fixing errors and misunderstandings post-hoc is more
costly.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning


[1] AN* discussions are not merely suggestions.  Depending on
consensus, statements made on AN*  can be actionable. Compliance might
be mandatory, failure to comply may be sanctionable.

The following consensus discussion is applicable:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Archive222#Researchers_requesting_administrators.E2.80.99_advices_to_launch_a_study

This discussion can be interpreted as denying the request to run this survey in 
the then proposed form, and discouraging the current form. The discussion also 
provides some minimal requirements to make the survey acceptable.  These 
requirements were only partially met.

[2] So far I've only found the following proposed policy:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice_banner_guidelines . Note
that this recommends that banners be approved by the community
beforehand. This was not done. 

[3] AFAICT, no input at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ANI#Harvard.2FScience_Po_Adverts
. It may be open to discussion whether or not the research committee
was properly informed via their page
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Dynamics_of_Online_Interactions_and_Behavior#Discussions_about_the_banner
 

[4] Jerome and I did try some last minute IAR-ish defence of the
project (and we convinced a number of people!). Obviously, our last-minute
arguments were insufficient to balance out the previous and continuing
issues at the time. (worth a try though! :-)

[5] WP:POLL suggests that simply discussing and then adhering to a
common position is potentially sufficient. Running an actual poll
might be counter-productive.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Regarding Berkman/Sciences Po study

2011-12-10 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 10:11:35PM -0500, Renata St wrote:
 
 When did the community turned into this old grumpy bunch being unhappy
 about everything?


Eh? Not in the least. I think Jerome is a nice guy; and so does
practically everyone else who has gotten up to speed on what's going on.

The problem is that the research committee made only a token effort
at finding or following relevant onwiki policy or consensus , nor did
they try to explain or correct their actions onwiki in a timely manner
as per WIARM. Or where they did, they didn't follow up. 

Any of those 3 elements (Policy, Consensus, WIARM/BRD) each could and
still can help bring people up to speed and reduce misunderstandings.
That's part of what they're for, after all! I'm sure that people will be
more supportive once things are sorted out in that way.

Hmm, the research committee still hasn't made any onwiki statement at a
relevant location that I can find. If this were a court case, RCom
would pretty much have lost by default and/or forfeit already. 

Fortunately, this is not a court case. :-)

Berkman and Science PO are nice people. They've already interacted with
enwiki a bit, and enwiki isn't exactly feeling mean towards them;
mostly just a little surprised and bewildered. I think that in the
worst case, we can cut out the middleman and have enwiki interact
directly with the researchers.


sincerely,
Kim There's a process for that[*] Bruning

[*] 'Staunch IAR Supporter States There's a process for that; In
other news, Flying Pig Airlines are now offering scenic ski-trips to
hell for the first time this season.'


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Re: [Foundation-l] Is a research banner advertising of the evil sort?

2011-12-09 Thread Kim Bruning
On Fri, Dec 09, 2011 at 03:00:41PM +, B?ria Lima wrote:
 If you want to see the banner:
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/viewtemplate=HSB_final_2
 
 And I, B?ria Lima (nice to meet you) disabled the banner upon a thread in
 Internal-l where people asked for it.

Internal-l is the new IRC, I take it? :-) Strictly you're ok by accident, I
think :-)

...but... remember to always reference on-wiki discussions and consensus for 
on-wiki
actions. As you may recall, off-wiki discussions may be referenced for
information, but never for consensus. [1]

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

[1] For completeness: once upon a time, wikipedia-l was also acceptable as a 
source of consensus. No one has tried to use that for quite a while though. ;-)

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Re: [Foundation-l] Is a research banner advertising of the evil sort?

2011-12-09 Thread Kim Bruning
On Fri, Dec 09, 2011 at 08:32:06PM +, B?ria Lima wrote:
 Not IRC, the private mailing list with Chapters + staff, I'm sure you heard
 of it before.

Indeed I have.

 And Kim, as far as I know there are NO WAY to put a sumary in a Central
 Notice action. And I'm not a en.wiki user, so I'm not forced to give any
 reason to en.wiki community about a action I took in another wiki. As for
 meta, there was a page (
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Central_notice_requests) created AFTER
 I disable the banner.

Just for an action on meta, I'm sure meta has the same rule.

 And again, that was not a on-wiki consensus: That was an action who
 started with a staff of WMF, discussed privately, put on air, discussed in
 a private mailing list, and took off.

Right, none of which is valid for meta _or_ for en.wikipedia afaik.

  When I need to do anything on en.wiki
 I follow en.wiki, until there, don't try to imposse them to me.

That said, your action did have consequences on-wiki on en.wikipedia, didn't it?

I don't really want to turn this into a bureaucratic fight; just a small note to
be careful. In the end you acted correctly according to consensus, albeit by
accident, as you now confirm.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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[Foundation-l] Indian Minister Kapil Sibal Wants to Censor social

2011-12-06 Thread Kim Bruning
media.
Reply-To: 

What to many appeared to be the abstractest of theory just
a few months ago, is now becoming frightful reality :-(
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-16044554

Kapil Sibal's position seems to be pretty much exactly in
line with our projected concept of image filtering (he
practically literally uses the term), except he then
extends the line all the way into censorship territory,
without further scrupules.

If we had already gone ahead with the image filter as
projected, we would be snookered by the time Kapil
Sibal called our Indian office folks to his office. 

With an image filter in place -pretty much exactly to
Indian Government specification right off the shelf-  there
would be no way to argue that such a thing was impossible,
difficult, or unconscionable. 

We would have either been forced to censor some of our  WM
projects You don't have enough image taggers for commons?
I'm sure we can provide some, or withdraw from India.
Since full-on censorship is intolerable, we would have been
forced to withdraw. 

Now we (still) have clean hands, and (with a bit of luck) can
probably put down a strong(er) argument that can weather
any Indian govt attacks on NPOV, should they come. If we
are careful, we can likely do so politely and assertively,
without hurting too many people's feelings. 

(Also: seeing reporting on facebook and twitter activity, and
having viewed pages from eg. Hindi Wikipedia, I do not
believe that the Indian internet community shares Kapil
Sibal's position. Though they'll have to speak for
themselves, of course! :-)


sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] Reminder: office hours this morning with WMF General Counsel

2011-12-06 Thread Kim Bruning
On Mon, Dec 05, 2011 at 08:12:48AM +0700, Anirudh Bhati wrote:
 On Saturday, December 3, 2011, Steven Walling swall...@wikimedia.org
  start
  to read the introduction that he wrote:
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Geoffbrigham/Strategy
 
 Why was this page deleted?

19:22, 2 December 2011 Philippe (WMF) (talk | contribs) deleted
User:Geoffbrigham/Strategy ??? (G6: Per author request: Author
request)

Oh hey, that's definitely odd! Are we getting a different page back? (In
that case, perhaps we should have done a move/redirect?)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning



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Re: [Foundation-l] Indian Minister Kapil Sibal Wants to Censor social

2011-12-06 Thread Kim Bruning
On Tue, Dec 06, 2011 at 09:25:03PM +0530, Achal Prabhala wrote:
 On Tuesday 06 December 2011 08:27 PM, Kim Bruning wrote:
  I do not  believe that the Indian internet community shares Kapil
  Sibal's position. Though they'll have to speak for
  themselves, of course! :-)
 They have:
 
 http://blogs.outlookindia.com/default.aspx?ddm=10pid=2664
 
 and Mr Sibal's passing thought of yesterday is probably not going anywhere.

And hurrah for that!  :-) 

My absolute nightmare scenario, of course, is that (the next) Mr Sibal calls 
Twitter,
Facebook, Google, ..., and Wikimedia   into his (or her) office; and that they 
all
mutter and hem and haw, except us. We would go Sir, yes sir! All ready to go 
sir!.
This would leave the other web 2.0 parties in a politically untenable 
position. 

It is my absolute belief that -without intervention- this scenario could happen 
and,
in fact, could have already happened. We have the resources, we have the 
technology,
but (fortunately) we haven't reached consensus on applying them in this manner, 
yet.

Wikimedia needs to be neutral, and rightly so, imo. However -in terms of 
essential
infrastructure, copyright and freedom of speech- we do have certain 
requirements. If
our supporting ecosystem does not meet those requirements, we fail to thrive.

Therefore, these essential items do require careful attention from social, 
financial,
technical *and* (unfortunately) political angles.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning




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Re: [Foundation-l] WP being edited by lobbying firm

2011-12-06 Thread Kim Bruning
On Tue, Dec 06, 2011 at 11:08:21AM +, Fae wrote:
 It would not be an unreasonable corrective action to take their boastful
 claims at face value and stick dirty great COI notices on the top of every
 Wikipedia article about each of their clients; with a suitable explanation
 on every talk page pointing to the newspaper source until a credible
 assessment has been completed to ensure no possible conflict of interest
 has compromised article neutrality.

That would be fighting POV with POV. Better to go through the list with a bunch 
of
patrollers, and just NPOVize the lot. :-) [citation needed] and all that. Check 
page
history for misbehaviour as well.


sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] Reminder: office hours this morning with WMF General Counsel

2011-12-02 Thread Kim Bruning
On Fri, Dec 02, 2011 at 09:23:14PM +0300, Dan Rosenthal wrote:
 Trying to connect -- anyone else having trouble or is it just me?
It's you. :-)

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

2011-12-01 Thread Kim Bruning
On Thu, Dec 01, 2011 at 08:53:09PM +1100, John Vandenberg wrote:
 The latter can be solved by labelling but not filtering.  If you are
 on the train and a link is annotated with a tag nsfw, you can not
 click it, or be wary about the destination page.

Dude, no. That's prejudicial labelling. 

Filtering:meh
Prejudicial Labelling: evil. Widely considered a Bad Idea (tm), since at least 
the '50s

The reason filtering is 'meh' (as opposed to 'mostly harmless') is
because it is hard to do without prejudicial labelling.  

sincerely,
Kim Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

2011-11-29 Thread Kim Bruning
On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 09:09:04AM +0100, M?ller, Carsten wrote:
  
  ... but -if we want to reach consensus[1]- what we really need to be
  discussing is: screwdrivers.
  
  sincerely,
  Kim Bruning
  
 
 No, we need to harden the wall agaist all attacks by hammers, screwdrivers 
 and drills.
 We have consensus: Wikipedia should not be censored.

Right, hammering ourselves on the thumb is a bad idea :-P

However, there's nothing wrong with making sure that people
don't get odd images when they don't expect it (something
wikipedia is good at, but commons admittedly perhaps slightly
less so). This is the screw.

I don't think a filter (the hammer) will be very successful at
doing so, because filters have simply never been very good at
keeping away unexpected content, and can easily lead to
censorship and other unwanted side effects (hitting ourselves
on the thumb).  However, perhaps some other tool might be
useful for fixing the screw. Some people have come up with some
interesting proposals.

But shouting at each other about filters is probably
counter-productive at this point. ;-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

2011-11-29 Thread Kim Bruning
On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 02:40:15PM +0100, Andre Engels wrote:
 On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 1:03 PM, Tobias Oelgarte
 tobias.oelga...@googlemail.com wrote:
 
  The problem starts at the point where the user does not choose the
  image(s) for himself and uses a predefined set on what should no be
  shown. Someone will have to create this sets and this will be
  unavoidably a violation of NPOV in the first place.
 
 No, why would it? What does it say if someone created such a set?
 These are pictures of such-and-so, and there might be people who do
 not want to see pictures of such-and-so. I don't see the NPOV here.
 Nobody is saying These pictures should not be seen. They are saying,
 some people would not like to see these pictures. That's not POV.

I thought we were past this point in the discussion, and working towards common 
consensus.

Here's the key argument from a fellow traveller[1] kind of organisation, to 
help you catch up. :-)

http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=interpretationsTemplate=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfmContentID=8657

sincerely,
Kim Bruning


[1] Am I using this term right?

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

2011-11-29 Thread Kim Bruning
On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 02:28:13PM +0100, Alasdair wrote:
 On Tuesday, 29 November 2011 at 13:42, Tobias Oelgarte wrote:
 
  With the tiny (actually big) problem that such lists are public and can be 
  directly feed into the
  filters of not so people loving or extremely caring ISP's.
  
  
 
  I think this is a point that I was missing about the objections to the 
 filter system.
 
 So a big objection is that any sets of filters is not so much to the weak 
 filtering on wikipedia but
 that such sets  would enable other censors to more easily make a form of 
 strong censorship of
 wikipedia where some images were not available (at all) to readers - 
 regardless of whether or not they
 want to see them?

 I am not sure I agree with this concern as a practical matter but I can 
 understand it as a theoretical
 concern. 

This is an old objection, which diverse library organisations have been dealing 
with for at least half a century
in their practice. They call such sets of prejudicial labels Censorship 
Tools, and are opposed to them.

eg.  
http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=interpretationsTemplate=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfmContentID=8657

See elsewhere for further sources. (they get brought up regularly)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

2011-11-29 Thread Kim Bruning
On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 01:30:12PM +, Tom Morris wrote:
 I find it highly unconvincing and wrote an extended blog post on the
 topic a while back:
 http://blog.tommorris.org/post/11286767288/opt-in-image-filter-enabling-censorware

Yes, but that blog post attacks a straw man. The actual library argument is a 
bit different.
(Notably, you don't address the ALA's concepts of prejudicial label or 
censorship tool)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2011 videos - mission complete!

2011-11-29 Thread Kim Bruning
On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 01:48:24PM +0200, Itzik Edri wrote:
 Hi,
 
 *I happy to announce that all the videos from Wikimania 2011 in Haifa are
 now available on our channel in YouTube!: http://www.youtube.com/WikimediaIL
 .*

* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emli8S2_trs
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c2Vb7CqTdc
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iDMLkC_pRg


O:-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning
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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

2011-11-29 Thread Kim Bruning
On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 12:51:04AM +0100, Tobias Oelgarte wrote:
 If we are careful enough we might be able to recycle the hammer to 
 construct two or more small screwdrivers an argument against the image 
 filter that is read as this: Put more effort inside ideas how to 
 improve search functionality and to help categorizing. It will actually 
 help everyone and would get clear referendum results. ;P

That's going in the right direction. And perhaps we can easily do more,
within the given constraints.
If so, there's no reason not to. :-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2011 videos - mission complete!

2011-11-29 Thread Kim Bruning
On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 01:05:32AM +0100, Tobias Oelgarte wrote:
 Am 30.11.2011 00:04, schrieb Kim Bruning:
  On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 01:48:24PM +0200, Itzik Edri wrote:
  Hi,
 
  *I happy to announce that all the videos from Wikimania 2011 in Haifa are
  now available on our channel in YouTube!: 
  http://www.youtube.com/WikimediaIL
  .*
  * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emli8S2_trs
  * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c2Vb7CqTdc
  * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iDMLkC_pRg
 
 
  O:-)
 
  sincerely,
  Kim Bruning

I was thinking a long sequence of victories. 

 That actually gave me a headache. But never mind.
 
 * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8bODUWy3Ks
 
 :-P

Revenge for the headache, I assume? :-P

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] Internet Workers of the World

2011-11-29 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 12:53:14AM +0100, Milos Rancic wrote:
 On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 23:35, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote:
  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Internet-Workers-of-the-World/224417737626665?sk=wall
 
  Our union
 
 I was thinking about party, but union is better :)


Ar?

Kim Pieces of Eight Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

2011-11-28 Thread Kim Bruning
On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 10:34:16AM +0100, Andre Engels wrote:
 On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 3:12 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
 cimonav...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Our core mission is making information and knowledge available to
 people who want it, not pushing it down their throats against their
 will.

Well, people actually have to surf over to wikipedia to be able to
get any information, it's not like we jump them in the streets :-P

But I kid. ;-) I don't think that pro- versus contra- censorship is
actually even the correct narrative.


Basically, we were all standing around looking at this screw that
needs to be put into the wall; and the board came with a mandate
Let's make a hammer!

* Some people went: Yeah, the screw needs to go in!
* Other people went: No way, hammers don't work on screws!
* A few people went: Dude, shouldn't we use some long object that we
can twist or something? 

Somehow the discussion has devolved to respectively 
* Why do you want the screw to stick out? versus 
* Why do you want to hit our thumb?...

... but -if we want to reach consensus[1]- what we really need to be
discussing is: screwdrivers.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

[1] I know, boring old fuddy duddy consensus. Controversy is much
more fun. ;-) But it takes away so much energy that could be used
for other stuff. I'd really like to finish this and actually have
some time left for editor retention -like- this year or so? :-)
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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

2011-11-27 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 02:41:51PM +, Tom Morris wrote:
 
 You can have lists stored
(...)
  on the WMF servers but in a secret file that they'll never
 ever ever ever release promise hand-on-heart*) 

This works so well if you DO read it sarcastically. ;-)

 and you can have lists stored publicly (in Adblock: the various public
 block lists that are community-maintained so that you don't actually
 see any ads, in an image filter: on the web somewhere). And you can
 put an instruction in the former list to transclude everything on a
 public list and keep it up-to-date.

Right, except then you have a public list of prejudicial labels. I think
that most have agreed that that's just a little too close to the fire for
comfort. 

 And if the WMF doesn't do it - perhaps because people are whinging
 that me being given the option to opt-in and *not* see My
 micropenis.jpg is somehow evil and tyrannical and contrary to
 NOTCENSORED

Even filter proponent Jimmy Wales is adamant about there being
no censorship (Period).

The part where people are disagreeing on is how close to we want to
dance to the fire, and how many burns do we accept?

My proposal is that perhaps we shouldn't be dancing close to the fire at
all. If we want to escape BadPictures(tm), how about a nice refreshing
swim instead? 

more concretely: 

I think filters are probably the wrong solution to the problem today (in
fact, they're more like a solution looking for a problem) . I now think
that a combination of on-wiki policy and prudence, and improved
categorisation and search on commons, would probably not only avoid
potential problems entirely, but actually be a heck of a lot more
effective too.

See:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Kim_Bruning#Image_filter

In this discussion with Atlasowa I challenge them to come with actual
numbers and facts. I think Atlasowa has proved all of us more-or-less
wrong ;-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning
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[Foundation-l] TVTropes policies: No such thing as notability.

2011-11-16 Thread Kim Bruning

Sometimes it's interesting to read policy from other wikis that are currently 
successful and growing and see how they differ from WP.

eg:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThereIsNoSuchThingAsNotability
or:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WikipediaUpdater
(considered an antipattern on tv tropes!)

Addiction warning: These are links to TVTropes.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife

(Isn't getting people addicted to reading and editing a *GOOD* thing, from a 
wiki POV?)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] Message to Fae

2011-11-07 Thread Kim Bruning
On Mon, Nov 07, 2011 at 04:18:54PM +, Oliver Keyes wrote:
 It's a WP USCRIPT at WP:TLA/TL:DR/TTP. DL it on the QT because it's TS and
 you'll get KP if found out.

ZOMG, you violated WP:WOTTA [1] !

sincerely,
Kim There's a policy for that Bruning.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WOTTA

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Re: [Foundation-l] Ideas for newbie recruitment

2011-11-02 Thread Kim Bruning
On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 02:08:24PM +0100, Svip wrote:
 On 31 October 2011 12:55, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  What's the impact of changes like
  https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Taglinediff=20130615oldid=17050524
  ?
 
 Thank you for that, that was hilarious to read through all those reversions.

Now you understand the true source of wiki-power: A sense of humor, and a keen 
sense of fun. grin

/me almost forgot wikipedia used to be that way. :-)

sincerely,
Kim ':-)' Bruning 



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[Foundation-l] Who *doesn't* suffer from adminitis these days?

2011-11-02 Thread Kim Bruning

In reference to people wanting to be nicer to newbies, (and next to the obvious 
step of us really needing
to make it more frelling obvious that YES YOU CAN EDIT)

... that doesn't help much if the entire community has come down with adminitis 
and kicks anyone who
tries to edit out of the wiki and up into low earth orbit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Adminitis


So qua editor retention, 2 things are needed:
* Make editing more obvious and easy, and bring the fun back. :-)
* Work on The Cure For Adminitis (tm). O:-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] News from Germany: White Bags and thinking about a fork

2011-10-28 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 03:36:18PM -0700, Erik Moeller wrote:
 
 Making it easy for editors to say, based on normal editorial judgment
 and established practices in their project, Hey, reader, there's
 something here you might not want to see  ... and BTW, would you like
 to remember that choice? seems like a more straightforward
 accommodation of the concerns that we're talking about than saying

That's actually just POV-pushing :-( , albeit very politely. :-) 

sincerely,
Kim Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] News from Germany: White Bags and thinking about a fork

2011-10-28 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 10:57:59AM +1100, Billinghurst wrote:

 I do wish that this discussion can just move to implementation. This is about
 what I get to filter for what I get to see, or when I get to see it. I have 
 had
 enough of other people believing that they get to make their choices for me.

That's kind of backwards. 

We're trying to figure out how to let you do that *WITHOUT* accidentally (or
deliberately (!)) ending up making your choices for you. 

It's actually a rather deceptively hard puzzle. 

I have the impression that most opposition comes from people with an IT
background. That is to say, people who have tried to figure it out, and have had
some trouble finding a solution. (I may be biased, since that's my own personal
background too)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning
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Re: [Foundation-l] News from Germany: White Bags and thinking about a fork

2011-10-28 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 03:13:22PM -0700, Erik Moeller wrote:
 On Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 2:51 PM, Tobias Oelgarte
 tobias.oelga...@googlemail.com wrote:
  What approaches do you have in mind, that would empower the editors and
  the readers, aside from an hide/show all solution?
 
 1) Add a collapsible [*] parameter to the File: syntax, e.g.
 [[File:Lemonparty.jpg|collapsible]].
 2) When present, add a notice [*] to the top of the page enabling the
 reader to collapse collapsible images (and to make that the default
 setting for all pages if desired).
 3) When absent, do nothing.

Unlike an image filter, I project that this would have limited incidental usage,
rather than having a sweeping effect across all pages.

There are still NPOV issues with having the function; but those issues can be
solved on the spot, using consensus, at the single image on a single page on a
single wiki level.  

(This as opposed to majority rule across all wikis which many others have
proposed ).

Because it is a local effect and subject to human common sense (aka. IAR) ,
unwanted emergent side effects (collateral damage) are much less likely, or at
worst limited in scope.

This as opposed to rigid software logic, which will often have side effects and
loopholes (bugs and exploits in hacker parlance).

Due to the incidental nature, it also would not be viable to harvest data for 
use
in third party filters.

In short, this seems like a fairly good wiki-like solution. :-) It's not 
perfect,
but nothing is. It seems to strike the right balance. I could certainly live 
with it.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning
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Re: [Foundation-l] News from Germany: White Bags and thinking about a fork

2011-10-28 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 08:49:42AM +0200, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
 
 It is my understanding that parental software is often too overarching
 or otherwise inadequate.

... and this despite (very likely) having a larger budget than the foundation 
;-)

There's a reason the software is inadequate, and that is because filtering is a
hard problem.

If we're smart, we'll try to do something that is slightly different from actual
filtering, to get around what I'm starting to suspect is something of a 
mathematical
pothole in our way. 

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

2011-10-11 Thread Kim Bruning
On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 07:19:00AM +0530, Theo10011 wrote:
 
 ...,a viable alternative to not relying blindly on the categorization
 system, would be implementing a new image reviewer flag on en.wp and maybe
 in commons. This method would create a list of reviewed images that can be
 considered objectionable, that could be filtered/black-listed. 

We could also just delete them, unless someone actually uses them in a sensible 
way in an article. :-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning
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Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

2011-10-11 Thread Kim Bruning
On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 09:53:55PM -0400, Risker wrote:
 Kim, I am getting the impression you are being deliberately obtuse.  

No, I'm being exhaustive. I wanted to ensure that there is no hair
of a possibility that  I might have missed a good faith avenue.

(I wouldn't have asked this question if you hadn't said I was
stating nonsense)

 I cannot decide what is being blocked, as a bottom level user.
 Those decisions have been made at a sysadmin or software level. I
 can tell you my experiences as a user on those systems, but I do
 not have the information you seek, nor am I in a position to
 obtain it.

flame on
Therefore you cannot claim that I am stating nonsense. The inverse
is true: you do not possess the information to support your
position, as you now admit.

In future, before you set out to make claims of bad faith in others,
it would be wise to ensure that your own information is impeccable
first.
/flame

sincerely,
Kim Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filtering without undermining the category system

2011-10-11 Thread Kim Bruning
On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 09:55:46PM +0100, WereSpielChequers wrote:
 OK in a spirit of compromise I have designed an Image filter which should
 meet most of the needs that people have expressed and resolve most of the
 objections that I'm aware of. Just as importantly it should actually work.
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/filter


Hmm, how would it fare against a marblecake attack? ;-)

http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/15/inside-the-precision-hack/

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

I just lost The Game! (yet again)

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filtering without undermining the category system

2011-10-11 Thread Kim Bruning
On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 11:20:15PM +0100, Thomas Morton wrote:
 On 11 October 2011 21:51, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote:
 
  On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 09:55:46PM +0100, WereSpielChequers wrote:
   OK in a spirit of compromise I have designed an Image filter which should
   meet most of the needs that people have expressed and resolve most of the
   objections that I'm aware of. Just as importantly it should actually
  work.
   http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/filter
 
 
  Hmm, how would it fare against a marblecake attack? ;-)
 
  http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/15/inside-the-precision-hack/
 
 
 I agree on the one hand that anything is potentially gameable but:
 
 a) Wikipedia is notoriously gameable and yet, fingers crossed, we have not
 had a mass Anon. attack. 

Actually, we've had all kinds of attacks. Anonymous is essentially our
friend though. The folks going after us are name suppressed to protect
the guilty.

Thanks to our anti-gaming policy (aka IAR), they don't often succeed }:-)

 b) The Time hack was rudimentary at every step - no matter how the media
 (or this blog) portray it. The root cause of the hack was a technical
 ineptness at a several levels in the Time poll which allowed it to be
 maninpulated on a number of levels.

Quite so. This means that we should learn from their ineptness, rather
than -say- copying it ;-)

 
 On the face of it any such system might be gameable; but no specific
 implementation details have been laid out (beyond the basic framework). So
 the concern it might be hacked to force a certain result is one of the
 most easily addressed :)

General rule of thumb: If you leak value preferences between users, with
no intermediate (soft) security, your system might be game-able. 

 More problematic with your blithe dismissal

I didn't dismiss anything, 
I asked how it would fare against a marblecake attack!


 is that the proposed implementation is inherently not all that
 gameable. This is because, as described, working out the filter for
 any individual is a P=NP (travelling salesman) problem.

And this is an interesting and constructive answer to that question. \o/

:-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning
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Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

2011-10-10 Thread Kim Bruning
On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 07:49:04PM +0100, David Gerard wrote:
 On 10 October 2011 18:37, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote:
 
  I think that having the image blurring system, combined with an option to 
  unblur,
  would get us very far towards the stated board directive, and I don't think
  many in the community would object, and we could reach consensus fairly 
  quickly.
 
 
 Not sure the blurring system would do the job for a workplace. At a
 distance, the blurred penis still looks exactly like a penis ...

Fair dinkum. We could have a blur or black-out option for
different occaisions. For further discussion, I think MZMcBride
was suggesting centralising discussion at mediawiki.org or meta.
:-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning
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Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

2011-10-10 Thread Kim Bruning
On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 11:18:23PM +0400, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:
 On Mon, 10 Oct 2011 19:37:05 +0200, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl
 wrote:
  On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 01:44:09PM +0400, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:
  I was following the discussion without ever giving my own opinion, and
 my
  impression is that we are going nowhere.
  
  
  I think what should come next is that one of the filter proponents
 would
  come up with a suggestion for a workable scheme. (I guess the opponents
  of
  the filter would not be so much interested). 
  
 ... 
  If there are but few additions, we can go straight to bugzilla. If
 people
  feel that
  adjustment is needed, we can take this to meta first, before moving to
  bugzilla.
  
  sincerely,
  Kim Bruning
 
 We definitely must have the page on Meta discussing it. There have been
 some objections raised already, and there have been other solutions
 suggested earlier, and other objections raised. Bringing it straight to
 Bugzilla makes no sense at this point. 

Roger that,

I'll (re)join the community discussion.
Which page(s) are being used atm?

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

2011-10-10 Thread Kim Bruning
On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 11:39:43PM +0400, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:
 On Mon, 10 Oct 2011 20:32:57 +0200, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl
 wrote:
 
  I'll (re)join the community discussion.
  Which page(s) are being used atm?
  
 None I know of.

That's ok. I'll leave the initiative to MzMcbride  join there.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

2011-10-10 Thread Kim Bruning
On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 04:52:48PM -0400, Risker wrote:
 
 Given the number of people who insist that any categorization system seems
 to be vulnerable, I'd like to hear the reasons why the current system, which
 is obviously necessary in order for people to find types of images, does not
 have the same effect.  I'm not trying to be provocative here, but I am
 rather concerned that this does not seem to have been discussed.


Been discussed to death, raised from the dead, chopped up with a 
chainsaw,reresurrected, taken out
with a sawn-off-shotgun, stood back up missing an arm...  they just keep on 
coming!


The current category system is not as vulnerable to being abused because it is 
not a prejudicial labelling
system.

In straight english:

Computers are sort of stupid. They can't infer intent.

A. If we want a computer program to offer something to be blocked, it needs a 
label that essentially says This Is
Something People Might Want To Block

B. A computer program cannot really safely determine what to do with licking 
or exposed breasts (especially as
are different norms on what is appropriate in different parts of the world)


Our current category system conforms to B. We would need some sort of mapping 
to A to make a category based filter
work.

Social problem: Mapping B to A is evil, according to ALA. ;-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

Patient: Doctor Doctor, it hurts when I map B to A!
Doctor: So Don't Do That Then



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Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

2011-10-10 Thread Kim Bruning
On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 07:12:04PM -0400, Risker wrote:
 
 
 
 Oh please, Kim; this is nonsense.  

Be careful with what you call nonsense. :-)

 Commercially available software is, even
 right now, blocking certain content areas by category and/or keywords for
 (at minimum) Commons and English Wikipedia;

Yes. These tools also have a category system. That category system
is structured very differently from the commons category system. 

Just because mediawiki uses a database and wordpress uses a
database, it doesn't mean that the two databases are
interchangable. That's just silly! (try it and see if you don't
believe me)

The same is true for categories (which are just a particular way
to structure a database anyway). Just because mediawiki uses
categories, and ACME CensorThemAll(tm) uses categories, doesn't
mean that they are necessarily interchangable in any way.

  I've seen it in operation. 

Let me check: Have seen your image filter software actually
directly use categories from commons? Are you sure?

 So there's no reason to believe that the current category
 system, which we use legitimately for content-finding, is not
 amenable to use in exactly the same way that an
 image-filter-specific category would be.

It would require some amount of remapping before it could be
practically used in that manner. 

sincerely,
Kim Bruning



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Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

2011-10-10 Thread Kim Bruning
On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 08:49:13PM -0400, Risker wrote:
 No, I can't arrange a demonstration, Kim. I do not have net nannies on any
 system that I control.  The systems on which I have encountered them are not
 publicly accessible. They have prevented access to all articles I tested
 within a given category on English Wikipedia and all images within a given
 category that I tested on Commons.

That sounds like it works on the basis of keywords, perhaps.

How thoroughly have you tested it, when did you do this test?

Can we check?

Can it block those images from the given category on commons, if
viewed on the actual pages they are used for on wikipedia? 

And will it also block images from the subcategory - if used on wikipedia?

I might investigate or even buy this software (if not exceptionally
expensive) and test it extensively if this is the case.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

2011-10-10 Thread Kim Bruning
On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 09:22:09PM -0400, Risker wrote:
 all the articles in [[:Category:Sexual positions]] 

looks extremely puzzeled

What are you trying to ... 

Let's try a question like: 

...Can you block [[:Category:Demolished windmills]] (and all
subcats?) for yourself?

sincerely,
Kim Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

2011-10-09 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sun, Oct 09, 2011 at 06:32:31PM +0100, Thomas Dalton wrote:
 
 I don't think the community really can avoid it, since it isn't a
 coherent body. An individual member of the community can't really
 achieve anything. The WMF has a hierarchy and structured decision
 making mechanisms, so it can take deliberate action. The community
 can't.

Actually, the community is quite capable of generating coherent action, thank
you. If you don't know how, there's folks around who can teach you. If you can't
find any, I'll show you how. :-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

2011-10-09 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sun, Oct 09, 2011 at 06:51:24PM +0100, Thomas Dalton wrote:
 I didn't say it can't take coherent action. Writing an encyclopaedia
 is a coherent action, after all. I said it can't take deliberate
 action. By deliberate action, I mean deciding to do something and then
 doing it. 

That's right.

 The way we work is that some people say they want to do
 something and then the community decides whether to let them or not.

That's not entirely right.

 That works for a lot of things, but not for what Lodewijk is talking
 about. We can't decide to discuss this with the WMF and reach a
 compromise and then do so. 

That's neither here nor there. There's a way to make that work. (A little more
complex than fits into this margin, but it's essentially what I'm up to all the
time, or when I'm up to things at any rate. :-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

2011-10-09 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sun, Oct 09, 2011 at 09:19:40AM -0700, Sue Gardner wrote:
 The Board is hoping there is a solution that will 1) enable readers to
 easily hide images they don't want to see, as laid out in the Board's
 resolution [1], while 2) being generally acceptable to editors. Maybe
 this will not be possible, but it's the goal. 

Perfect. That's exactly what I was hoping for.

It's a deal! :-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] almost wikipedia talk

2011-10-05 Thread Kim Bruning
On Wed, Oct 05, 2011 at 02:48:21PM -0700, phoebe ayers wrote:
 Of interest:
 Benjamin Mako Hill is giving a talk at the Berkman Center on October
 11, entitled: Almost Wikipedia: What Eight Collaborative Encyclopedia
 Projects Reveal About Mechanisms of Collective Action
 
 It will be webcast:
 http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2011/10/makohill

That is SO awesome! :-) I'm definitely going to watch and read about that.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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[Foundation-l] (erratum) Re: We need more information (was: Blog from Sue about ...)

2011-10-01 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sat, Oct 01, 2011 at 03:21:45AM +0200, Kim Bruning wrote:
 On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 08:47:43PM +0530, Bishakha Datta wrote:

  On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 4:04 PM, Lodewijk 
  lodew...@effeietsanders.orgwrote:

^- apologies for leaving this quote-line in. I was replying to a quote
by Bishaka Datta. 

The MUA generated indent and In-Reply-To (threading) headers are correct,
so many MUA's show me as replying to Bishaka. (including mine) so I 
didn't notice I'd missed a line.


sincerely,
Kim Bruning




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Re: [Foundation-l] Blog from Sue about censorship, editorial judgement, and image filters

2011-09-30 Thread Kim Bruning
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 04:12:37PM +0200, Milos Rancic wrote:
 Up to now, all females from US (four of them) are in favor of filter
 (though, Sarah just tactically) and the only one not from US
 (Brazil/Portugal) is against.

This is not entirely true. At least one other .us female is against.
(To wit, the one who asked me to post on foundation-l on this matter
in the first place. ;-) )

sincerely,
Kim TINC Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] Blog from Sue about censorship, editorial judgement, and image filters

2011-09-30 Thread Kim Bruning
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 09:10:37PM +0200, Andre Engels wrote:
 
 No, we won't be. We will be putting certain categories/tags/classifications
 on images, but it will still be the readers themselves who decide whether or
 not they see the tagged images.

Well, those tags would be public, so *anyone* can decide whether or not
downstream can see the tagged images. 

Semantically and technically there's very little difference between our
current proposed implementation and that of intermediate parties.
The consequences are both obvious and chilling.

We might be just a little too close to the edge on this one. We
need some other options. :)


Fortunately, people like Erik Moeller have been considering other
implementations, where no central categories or lists are used.

Those seem MUCH more sane, and are probably the way forward here. :-)


sincerely,
Kim Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] We need more information (was: Blog from Sue about ...)

2011-09-30 Thread Kim Bruning
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 08:36:43PM +0530, Bishakha Datta wrote:
 On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 4:04 PM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.orgwrote:
 **I am also dismayed at the use of the word 'censorship' in the context of a
 software feature that does not ban or block any images. But somehow there
 doesn't seem to be any other paradigm or language to turn to, and this is
 what is used as default, even though it is not accurate. It's been mentioned
 1127 times in the comments, as per Sue's report to the board, and each time
 it is mentioned, it further perpetuates the belief that this is censorship.

The term censorship _tool_ -however- is correctly used in the context of any 
of
the proposed prejudicial labelling systems.

In fact (in part due to the properties of prejudicial labelling) it is too easy
to violate other aspects of the board resolution when implementing a form of
labelling.


Fortunately, labelling is *not* actually required by the board resolution. 

So, the solution going forward -imo- is to implement a software solution that
doesn't depend on labelling. 

At that point, your arguments hold water; and I agree with them
wholeheartedly. :-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning
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Re: [Foundation-l] We need more information (was: Blog from Sue about ...)

2011-09-30 Thread Kim Bruning
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 08:47:43PM +0530, Bishakha Datta wrote:
 On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 4:04 PM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.orgwrote:

 24,023 people responded to that question, with 23,754 selecting a number on
 the scale. The result was mildly in favour of the filter, with an average
 response of 5.7 and a median of 6.
 
 How do we understand this? And how should this be factored into making a
 decision?

The distribution is strongly bimodal. Describing it as mildly in favor is not 
accurate.

sincerly,
Kim Bruning
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Re: [Foundation-l] Experiment: Blurring all images on Wikipedia

2011-09-30 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sat, Oct 01, 2011 at 02:46:52AM +0200, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
 Hi,
 
   A while ago I made a bookmarklet that blurs images in articles on the
 english Wikipedia and reveals them when the user hovers over the image.
 I now had a chance to test this as a skin.js extension.

Constructive solutions FTW. :-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] Three short films about Wikipedia

2011-09-28 Thread Kim Bruning

On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 02:02:20PM +0200, Lennart Guldbrandsson wrote:
 Okay. I hope that I didn't stifle your comment, though. One idea:
 
 Feel free to dub in your own voices if you want voices. That could be very
 cool!
 
 Best wishes,
 
 Lennart

Actually, if this is going to be shown at conferences and such,
it might be handier to add subtitles? :-)

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] 10th wiki-birthdays?

2011-09-25 Thread Kim Bruning
On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 08:56:55AM +0200, Andre Engels wrote:
 On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 7:07 AM, aude aude.w...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  Rather than 10th birthday for the projects, I think he's talking about as
  an
  editor.  Anyone here who has been editing for 10 years? ;)
 
 
 Plus a few months, my first edits were from March 2001.

First five edits in Nov 2001. :-) (including anime, flying saucers,
and Dijkstra ;-) )

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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[Foundation-l] 10th wiki-birthdays?

2011-09-24 Thread Kim Bruning
And now for something completely different. :-)

Who here has already had their 10th wikibirthday, and who will have it soon?

Seems like an excuse  for a party :-)

sincerely,
Kim 'TINC' Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] A possible solution for the image filter

2011-09-23 Thread Kim Bruning
On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 04:50:03AM -0700, Robert Rohde wrote:
 
 I have had the impression that the oh-my-god-think-of-the-children
 crowd was at least 95% of the reason we were discussing this entire
 endeavor.

So how about the folks who don't want to see kids exposed to
filters? (serious question!)

An occaisional annoying image or icky text will happen from
time to time, but filters just grind and grind on you 
day in and day out. 

That's not going to be good for the mental health of 
developing minds.

Well, perhaps that's drifting slightly off-topic for foundation-l
but to stay on topic: be aware that the position is reversible: 

Think of the children, don't filter!

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] A possible solution for the image filter

2011-09-23 Thread Kim Bruning
On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 01:20:06PM +0100, Andrew Gray wrote:
 On 22 September 2011 12:19, WereSpielChequers
 werespielchequ...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  One of the objections is that we don't want a Flickr style system which
  involves images being deleted, accounts being suspended and the burden of
  filtering being put on the uploader.
 
 The objection to a flickr-style concept was to the one size fits all
 safe/not-safe rating done by a central staff.
 
 As Stephen notes, Flickr's specific approach does involve deletion,
 suspension, etc etc etc, 

 but none of the proposals for the filter have
 suggested anything like this - there's no desire to remove the images,
 just to label them for display [or not] in articles.

And that labelling is the problem. It doesn't go so far as
censorship, agreed, but a labelling scheme _would_ seem to create a
set of censorship tools.

For some people that's over the line, for others it's not. 

Some people are debating how many angels will fit on the head of the needle
Where do we draw the line

Others feel offended in their core moralities, and are getting more disgusted 
and angry every day that this lasts, (And I do recognize that
there are many different core moralities).

I don't think we can say that our readers are more important than our
writers or vice versa. Personally, I don't believe we should make a
difference anyway. But on the other hand, it's a stupid argument even
if they're not. Without _both_ readers and writers (or reaters?
wriders? prosumers!) we don't have a wikipedia.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning
 

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Re: [Foundation-l] There is a deadline

2011-09-23 Thread Kim Bruning
On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 04:43:08PM +0200, emijrp wrote:
 Hi all;
 
 I have written an essay (my first one)[1] about the idea There is a
 deadline. It is opposite to the old essay (from 2006) which holds that
 there is no deadline.

Wow, excellent text. The only downside to stating that there is a
deadline is that there is a lot of pressure, which might not be good.

I like the fact that this dispells the myth that we are finished
in any sense.

cracks knuckles

sincerely,
Kim Bruning
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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter

2011-09-23 Thread Kim Bruning
On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 02:03:00PM +0200, m...@marcusbuck.org wrote:
 After some thinking I come to the conclusion that this whole  
 discussion is a social phenomenon.
 
 
 I think the same is happening here. The majority of people probably  
 think that an optional opt-in filter is a thing that does no harm to  
 non-users and has advantages for those who choose to use it. (Ask your  
 gramma whether You can hide pictures if you don't want to see them  
 sounds like a threatening thing to her.) But the scepticists voice  
 their opinions loudly and point out every single imaginable problem.

However, poll data suggests otherwise (taking the de.wikipedia
sample). AFAIK it's a minority that want filters, with a majority
that doesn't.

But let's say that you are correct.

I don't think many people are opposed to opt-in filters, because they
think such a filter will have no side effects. 

They're also not generally opposed to unicorn ponies, because they
think such ponies won't make a mess.

In fact, I think lots of people would be all for Sharks with laser
Beams on their heads- provided they are Mostly Harmless.


Filters without Side Effects, Ponies that don't Make A Mess,
Laser Sharks that are Mostly Harmless.

All of these would be *priceless*.

Unfortunately, there's some things that money simply can't buy
For everything else, there's wikimedia.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] Possible solution for image filter

2011-09-23 Thread Kim Bruning
On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 09:27:41AM +0100, Fae wrote:
 How odd, checking Tobias' list, I tried
 http://www.safesearchkids.com/wikipedia-for-kids.html to look for
 penis and it recommended [[File:Male erect penis.jpg]] as the second
 match. I was expecting it to restrict me to the more rounded and
 educational encyclopaedia entries, not straight to the most
 challenging images without context.
 
 If the WMF were to recommend such a solution for schools or
 religious groups, we might run into some immediate complaints.

Right. That's because actual *reliable* general filtering is
impossible with modern 21-st century technology. We call it an
AI-hard problem. 

Be aware that most filter solutions are an outright scam. 

The only way to make a general filter that would really work, is to
get a bunch of human beings together and classify all the world's
knowledge.

So... guess what we have as a (partial) prerequisite for our opt-in filter?

sincerely,
Kim Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] Possible solution for image filter

2011-09-23 Thread Kim Bruning
On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 11:38:18AM +0100, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
 Wikipedia was also briefly blocked in Pakistan, because of the Mohammed 
 cartoon controversy. So there might be a scenario where countries like Saudi 
 Arabia and Pakistan figure out how to block access to adult images and images 
 of Mohammed on Wikipedia permanently, using methods like the ones you 
 describe, based on the personal image filter categories.?
 That might be a concern worth talking about. 

Quite so. Welcome to the discussion. :-)

 Of course, it has to be balanced against the concern that these countries can 
 block Wikipedia altogether.

Our strategy so far is to indeed give people the choice of all or
nothing. Most people will choose for all, and thus we practically
remain uncensored worldwide.

If we create filter categories, our current anti-censorship strategy
will likely no longer work.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning


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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter

2011-09-23 Thread Kim Bruning
On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 11:57:01PM +1000, Stephen Bain wrote:
 On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 9:25 PM, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote:
 
  However, poll data suggests otherwise (taking the de.wikipedia
  sample). AFAIK it's a minority that want filters, with a majority
  that doesn't.
 
 The dewiki poll had 300 participants, the one on meta over 23,000.

Hmm, one of us is mistaken, I think.

So far, AFAICT we had an implemetation preferences survey via
a reliable external third party, and a poll on de.wikipedia.

The survey was not a poll or referendum, and did not address the
fundamental question of whether this feature is wanted. 

The only actual poll I am aware of which asked this question was on
de.wikipedia.

There is also a discussion on meta, but no poll so far that I can
tell.

Are there any polls or surveys we have missed? If so, please link!

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Foundation-l] Extension:Babel

2011-09-23 Thread Kim Bruning
On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 12:18:21AM +1000, John Vandenberg wrote:
 Extension Babel is now deployed.
 
 http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Babel
 
 Thank you Roan.

Oh noes! The start of the userboxen debacle is now internalized in
teh codes! ;-)

OTOH, babel boxes actually were/are useful from time to time. Jolly
good show!

sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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